Iran Ambitions Dominate as Netanyahu Heads to White House Talks With Obama

By Margaret Talev and Jonathan Ferziger -
Mar 2, 2012

After Eliot Engel and Jerrold Nadler, two Democratic congressmen from New York, met with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem last
month, Engel’s wife summed it up:

“They talked about Iran, and then they talked about Iran,
and then they talked about Iran,” Pat Engel said of the Feb. 20
meeting, which lasted roughly an hour and included additional
participants including both lawmakers’ wives. “Did I mention
that they talked about Iran?”

How to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program is now the
dominant issue in the Israel-U.S. alliance as Netanyahu and
President Barack Obama -- two men with a history of frosty
relations -- prepare to meet at the White House on March 5.

“It’s like a psychological showdown when Netanyahu comes
to Washington,” said Shlomo Brom, senior research fellow at Tel
Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.

Their closed-door talks will cap weeks of indirect
messaging via emissaries and public positioning, including a
speech March 4 by Obama before the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee in Washington, the biggest pro-Israel
organization in the U.S. Netanyahu, who is stopping in Canada on
his way to the U.S., speaks to AIPAC on March 5 after his talks
with Obama.

Obama, in an interview published today in the Atlantic
magazine, said Iran can’t be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon
and the U.S. will do what’s necessary.

‘I Don’t Bluff’

“I don’t bluff,” Obama said of a U.S. willingness to use
military action if needed. “I also don’t, as a matter of sound
policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are.”

Obama told the Atlantic that his relationship with
Netanyahu is “very functional” and expressed frustration that
critics still question his support for Israel. “Why is it that,
despite me never failing to support Israel on every single
problem that they’ve had over the last three years, that there
are still questions about that?” he said.

The White House meeting and AIPAC speeches coincide with
growing concerns about Iran’s growing nuclear capabilities.

The U.S. and the European Union tightened economic
sanctions following a Nov. 8, 2011, report by United Nations
inspectors that Iran’s nuclear research program may include
pursuing the capability to build a nuclear weapon. It said there
was evidence Iran was working on a design to fit on a missile
capable of reaching Israel and Europe. Iran says its nuclear
program is for civilian energy and medical research.

Question of Time

Israeli leaders, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak,
have said that time is running out for a military strike to
succeed in derailing the program. U.S. officials say there is
still time to let sanctions work before resorting to military
action.

Iran has nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordo that were
built to withstand air attacks. It now produces almost 31 pounds
(14 kilograms) of 20 percent-enriched uranium a month, compared
with almost nine pounds (four kilograms) in November, the
International Atomic Energy Agency said Feb. 24.

Iran may be able to stockpile enough enriched uranium to
make two nuclear devices if it decides to continue enriching to
weapons-grade, according to Olli Heinonen, a senior fellow at
Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs and a former IAEA chief inspector.

Obama said at a fundraiser in New York last night that the
U.S. has a “sacrosanct commitment” to Israel’s security.

‘Red Lines’

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Jewish Republican from
Virginia who is critical of Obama, said the president should use
his speech at AIPAC to set out “red lines” that would prompt
the U.S. to initiate or support for military action. “What we
need is more clarity from the administration,” Cantor said.

That’s unlikely, said David Makovsky, a fellow at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research center in
Washington. It is “not serious to believe that the United
States is going to publicly define its red lines at this time.”

That topic is “crucial,” however, for Obama and Netanyahu
to discuss in private, Makovsky said.

“The U.S. making clear to Israel what are the thresholds
that would trigger a U.S. intervention could really reshape the
debate in Israel about whether Israel should strike out alone,”
he said.

Israel’s Economy

Netanyahu’s visit comes as Israel’s economy probably
expanded at a rate of 4.8 percent in 2011, according to the
International Monetary Fund, compared with 1.7 percent for the
U.S., according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The Bloomberg Riskless Return Ranking showed the Tel Aviv
TA-25 Index (TA-25) returned 7.6 percent in the 10 years ended Feb. 17,
after adjusting for volatility, the highest of 24 developed-
nation benchmark indexes, even as the country has faced threats
of violence.

Oil prices have increased 8.3 percent this year, partly
because of prospects of military action involving Iran, which
might disrupt Gulf oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

Brom, a retired general and former head of the Israeli
army’s strategic planning branch who is now at Tel Aviv
University, said Israel is “very seriously considering taking
military action.” Obama must convince Israel that the U.S. is
“serious about getting tougher” on Iran, he said, and
“there’s a difference between demonstrating ‘seriousness’ and a
commitment that the U.S. going to take military action.”

No ‘Big Gaps’

Dennis Ross, Obama’s former Iran policy adviser and a
counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said
the distance between Israel and the U.S. is overstated.

“I don’t think there are these big gaps between the two
sides,” Ross said. “There’s agreement on objectives. I think
there’s even agreement on preferred means. I think there’s a
question of how much time you give diplomacy to work.”

Next week’s events also serve as an opportunity for Obama,
50, and Netanyahu, 62, to repair their personal relationship.

They have been at odds since the start of Obama’s
presidency. Soon after taking office, Obama pushed Israel to
freeze construction of Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas
to restart peace talks. Netanyahu has been approving more.

Last November, journalists at a G-20 meeting in France
overheard a conversation between Obama and French President
Nicolas Sarkozy in which Obama acknowledged Sarkozy’s dislike
for Netanyahu by saying, “I have to deal with him even more
often than you.”

Trust and Suspicion

“There’s very little trust and there’s a lot of
suspicion” between Obama and Netanyahu, said Aaron David Miller, a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars in Washington and a former
Mideast peace negotiator. “The subtext of this relationship is
a broken and dysfunctional one.”

Fen Hampson, director of the Norman Paterson School of
International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, said
Netanyahu will seek “strong expressions of support” from
Canada, where he stops before he visits Washington.

How Obama and Netanyahu communicate through the AIPAC
conference and at their White House meeting may signal to Iran
the degree to which the U.S. and Israel are working together.

Netanyahu ‘Upset’

Senator John McCain, who met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem
last month, said the Israeli prime minister was “very, very
upset” with the Obama administration.

McCain’s meeting came after the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey, said on CNN on
Feb. 19 that “it’s not prudent at this point to decide to
attack Iran,” that Iran “has not decided” to weaponize its
nuclear capability and that Iran’s regime is “a rational
actor.”

McCain, an Arizona Republican, said he shared Netanyahu’s
frustrations because “the best way to encourage continued
Iranian nuclear buildup is to create public perceptions of a
split between the U.S. and Israel.”

McCain said he hopes Obama and Netanyahu, in their private
discussions, can agree on red lines such as levels of uranium
enrichment by Iran that are unacceptable and other benchmarks
for weapons assembly or increased capability.

Jon Alterman, director of the Mideast Program at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, a policy institute in
Washington, said while both leaders have a policy interest in
moving closer together, “I just wonder if either politician, as
elections draw closer, feels comfortable to expose himself to
the other. I don’t see either one of them going out of his way
to make life easier for the other.”

Groundwork for Talks

In the weeks leading up to Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S.,
dozens of Obama administration officials, U.S. lawmakers from
both political parties and leaders of American Jewish
organizations have flown to Israel to meet with Netanyahu and
other officials. Likewise, top Israeli officials have visited
Washington.

Antony Blinken, national security adviser to U.S. Vice
President Joe Biden, told participants at an Israel Policy Forum
briefing in New York on Feb. 27 that Israel would make “its own
decisions” regarding Iran, according to the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz. Blinken said the U.S. does not tell its “allies and
partners what to do when it comes to their own national
security.”

The U.S. Air Force chief of staff, General Norton Schwartz,
said Feb. 29 that the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs have prepared
military options to strike Iranian nuclear sites in the event of
a conflict.

U.S.-Israel Cooperation

Tensions between Obama and Netanyahu haven’t prevented
cooperation. Intelligence is shared. Obama opposed a Palestinian
bid for statehood through the United Nations, and the U.S.
authorized the sale of 5,000-pound (2,268-kilogram) bunker-
buster bombs to Israel in 2009 and funds for its Iron Dome
missile defense system.

Nathan Diament, director of the Institute for Public
Affairs of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of
America, met with Netanyahu and other political and military
officials last month on a visit to Israel with roughly 100
leaders of American Jewish organizations.

“What you hear from government officials on both sides, in
public and private conversations, is that the two governments
are constantly communicating and coordinating.”

Diament said what he hopes to see next week is “a clear
message” to Iranians “that they will not drive a wedge between
Israel and the United States, and the western community
generally.”

Republican Candidates

AIPAC will also hear from candidates for the Republican
presidential nomination, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Michigan Governor Mitt Romney and former
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Obama won in 2008 with 78
percent support from Jewish voters, according to national exit
polls. By portraying Obama as anti-Israel, Republicans aim to
cut into that majority.

There’s “a lot of doubt within the American-Jewish
community about this president,” Cantor said. “There’s a real
prospect now that this president will suffer at the polls.”

McCain said while he wished that were true, he’s less
convinced because Jewish-American voters still tend to favor
Democrats on domestic issues and “the Jewish vote, as it was in
2008, cares more about domestic issues than national security.”

“I guarantee you it will be a charm offensive while he’s
here,” McCain said of Obama’s rhetoric during Netanyahu’s
visit. “They don’t want to alienate a large bloc of Jewish
voters.”